


there is nothing to fear (but fear itself)

by cartoonheart



Category: The Hour
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-03 12:51:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonheart/pseuds/cartoonheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 2x06.</p><p>The rhythm of Bel and Freddie is off-kilter. Bel-and-Freddie, Freddie-and-Bel. It is still there but Freddie can't grasp it and get it synchronised, as hard as he tries. It keeps slipping away from him like it used to, confounded by America and French wives and Bel's endless supply of unavailable men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

At essentially their first encounter, Freddie Lyon had found himself inexplicably, irreversibly, incalculably in love with Bel Rowley.

The swift immediacy of this thought becoming fact annoyed him somewhat. Freddie had always been accustomed to being untethered to other people (partly by choice, partly not). He had drifted through his life thus far reasonably content with this. 

However, now suddenly finding himself in a situation that he couldn't talk himself out of? Well, it was inconvenient to say the least. 

And it wasn't like he hadn't tried. After all, to err is human, and Bel Rowley was completely human in every way that counted. But she was also bold and striking. Freddie wanted to write poetry about her, even though writing poetry had never been his forte because he lived for facts, not clumsy similes. 

Nevertheless, he did feel that she was something like the sun. All of a sudden he revolved around her.

\--

They had both started at the BBC on a crisp winter Monday morning.

It was Wednesday before he had said anything to her, and whatever it was (oh, how could he not even remember the first words he had spoken to her? Surely something that important should have been written down in the annuals of Bel and Freddie's history), it made her eyes crinkle in the corners with laughter, and tap him lightly on the arm. It wasn't a gesture that he'd seen other girls make - flirtateous or coy, with the aim of getting what they wanted from their intended target. No, with Bel it was just _real_ , and reactive and distinctively _her_.

By the end of the third week, they were best friends.

Years went by.

\--

Her and her bankers, or brokers, or whatever they were. All suits and expensive watches, and shiny shiny shoes. They made Bel wait and for some reason she did - the woman who waited for no one, but was force itself. Somehow she demured in the face of these men, as Freddie watched silently (or not so silently on occasion). They placed their hands on her waist like she was their property and Freddie's fingers itched with it. 

He wasn't jealous, he told himself (constantly, again and again). Jealousy would imply that she belonged to him when it was clear to everyone but her that she belonged to no one.

If only she could see it.

\--

He leaps, figuratively.

She leaps too.

In the end, his leap is literally a hobble because he had a fractured ankle and a blown knee, and his hip sometimes popped in the joint. Bel props him up as he walks and he sees how her hands shake when she looks at his injured face. 

From what he's been told (although not by her) she had stayed with him. _There_. Outside. He imagines her knees grass-stained and mud on her skirt hem. Freddie can't really remember the details - mostly it is all fragments and red, but he knows he would have been thinking of her, because she is always on his mind, through all things.

It has been weeks of recovery, and he tries to reassure her that he's okay (or as okay as he can be, given the circumstances). But Freddie can tell by the way she watches over him that she is still stuck in that living breathing nightmare of a moment. She goes to touch him to check if he is still real. Her smile is tight and her eyes don't crinkle in the corners anymore. 

Something between them has been tainted by his bruises and broken bones. He now has so many scars that he has lost count and although Freddie has never been extremely vain, he can't help but wonder if he is now repulsive to her. Bel, who loves Cary Grant, and who maybe even loved Hector once. Freddie knows he was never a matinee idol to begin with, but now he can't pretend that he doesn't quite have a face for television anymore. 

Of course, deep down he knows that Bel isn't superficial like that. She doesn't consider these things important, as people of true beauty (in Freddie's opinion) generally don't. But it doesn't stop him making sure he always sits with his good side facing her, when he can. His right side is much better; almost as it was, in fact. Letting them both pretend, even just for a minute, makes it feel like nothing much has changed.

\--

Freddie is off work for three months. It drives him crazy.

He does however spend that time filing for a divorce.

Camille, lovely Camille, is co-operative and even considerate about the whole thing. Perhaps her deserved anger at him has melted away in the face of his broken body in the white hospital bed. She had looked pale and anxious when she first visited (or at least the first visit that he was awake to recall). Freddie guessed it was hard to remain angry at a man who had so barely clung to life just a short time before.

Eventually, those months later with the signed papers now between them, they say goodbye. He wishes her well and genuinely means it. She tells him to be careful and looks at him pointedly as if to say that she doesn't want to see another woman broken by Freddie Lyon like herself and like Bel.

\--

Not touching Bel is the worst curse of all. Freddie contemplates the way he clawed his way back to consciousness (hazes of loud hospital noises, and Bel crying, and the smell of Lix's cigarettes and Hector's guffawing laugh as he reads the tabloids out loud in the echoing hospital room). His fight was always to get back to Bel, much like his initial fight to instigate himself into her life those years ago (and in hindsight, he comforts himself to remember that she had taken very little convincing). 

His injuries take a long time to heal. Bel refuses to let him out of her sight, but does not directly say it. She makes murmurs that the mattress on the floor of his flat will not do (she's right, of course) and insists that he stays at her flat, in her narrow bed.

She sleeps on the sofa.

After all this time, Bel still watches him like he might disappear, like he is a figment of her imagination. For so many years, he had been the one whose eyes had followed her. Now, the situation is reversed. But instead of being irked that he is treated like a child, Freddie is even more madly in love with her and the idea that she finds him precious enough to take such consideration. He is now the sun in her world and the idea of this feels topsy-turvy to him. 

However, things feel delicate at the moment; much like his broken bones (still healing) or the various ugly stitches that hold him together. He knows that if he starts to kiss her, he won't be able to stop. But Freddie has enough dulled instinct remaining to know that now is not the time, and that while she circles him anxiously in those nightime moments when she is not at Lime Grove, there are still obstacles for them for now. Freddie spends the long (tedious) daylight hours on Bel's sofa thinking about the possibility of kissing her again. But he imagines that what he would feel is her sigh into his mouth and a soft choke in her throat before her hand would (gently) grip his wrist and she would move away. It was not a rebuff, his imagination knew. But there was a wall yet. A wall made up on Cilenti's fists and Freddie's resurfacing memories. Of scars and bruises, and Bel's fear of losing him to it all again. 

Not yet. They were both still too broken to save each other right now.

But soon.

\--

He still wakes from panicked nightmares, sheets tangling at his feet and Bel's worried face appearing from the doorway. Sometimes Freddie can hardly breathe from the fear and the powerlessness it makes him feel. 

During the daylight hours it is easier to forget. He reads, or watches television. He does endless supplies of crossword puzzles (he's an expert now). But at night Freddie can't control his mind from where it seems determined to go. All it wants to do is remind him of the sound a fist makes when it hits soft flesh, the intense howls of his own pain. Of being trapped and helpless and watching his mortality slip through his blood soaked fingers.

\---

Freddie will marry this woman. He has a ring which is more than he had when he proposed to Camille (after a night of poetry and gazing at the stars - it feels a world away now: another lifetime). He never gave Camille his mother's ring which perhaps says everything that he never admitted to himself when they were together. Perhaps he had always visualised that particular ring on Bel's finger - always in motion on a typewriter or tapping a pen thoughtfully against a notepad filled with her cursive scrawl. 

Freddie's not that educated in love. But he knows that he loves Bel. Always has, of course, and that is the simple truth of it. But considering his affection for words, he's never tried to describe in his own what it is about Bel that leaves him feeling hollow inside without her. He doesn't know if even he has words enough for that.

\--

He is officially healed. Or as near to it as he will ever get, the doctors say. Some of the fingers on his left hand still don't have full motion, but it is enough for him to still type (he's checked) and his hip joint still clicks at times. But he can essentially move everything else and his stitches have been taken out. The only reminders he has left are the puckered lines that zigzag across his body and the more prominent scar on his cheekbone. His eye hasn't regained full sight yet but it continues to improve. He figures that a little blurriness isn't the end of the world, in the grand scheme of things. Hector takes pains to remind him everyday that it could have been worse - although Freddie doesn't doubt that Hector isn't overly upset at the idea of hosting the show on his own again. After the attack, Freddie and the role he played became headline news, even though he wasn't even conscious to know about it. Although Freddie has fought his corner for Bel to let him in front of the camera again ("to let the public see the damage", he says brutally, honestly), Bel resists with a sad shake of her head. The world has moved on now. There are new stories and Cilenti is forgotten. Besides, she won't let Freddie relive it even indirectly, otherwise then she would have to as well.

Although he pretends to, Freddie doesn't mind that much really. The elation of being alive still pounds through his veins and he knows there are bigger battles in life than this.

\--

He can tell that Bel is hesitant at first, when he kisses her - just once, briefly, softly, standing in the middle of her kitchen after his second day back at work. He won't lie and pretend that it hadn't been difficult. The hard floors are jarring on his still soft bones and stairs are a nightmare he'd like to avoid. But he's back and that's more than he ever though he would be during those long weeks when his body lay prone in a crisp white hospital bed, and Bel's red-rimmed eyes matched the colour of her once-favourite dress.

Freddie wonders if perhaps she is terrified of hurting him, rather than anything else. He wants to tell her that not touching her has been far more painful than the healing of his injuries, but it sounds silly even to his ears.

She sets a Bill Halley record playing (one of the ones he let her keep, despite the fact that he won that bet fair and square). Freddie pours them both a vodka and she eventually sits down next to him on the sofa. Her shoes are kicked off by the door and he watches her stockinged toes wiggle and curl. This situation is familiar, yet new. There are undertones and unspoken things hovering in the air. On the surface, it is the same. But there is still something different at work here too; different compared to their previous nights of lively drunken debate that end with him sleeping on the sofa. 

After their first glass of vodka, he pours them another and they talk about the past. The safe past, the days when things were murky and unclear between them, and yet were still less terrifying than what they are facing now. Bel goes to put her hand on his knee but hesitates. Freddie wants whatever is coming, always has, but finds himself anxious in a way he didn't anticipate. He has spent so long wanting Bel that he doesn't know what it is not to want her. He wants and wants, but most of all, wants her safe and happy and always there with him, and not leaving him, like his mother, or Ruth and Camille. 

They laugh about their old editor, and the ridiculous copy they used to have to write in their greener days. Endless stories of debutantes and politician's wives. They talk about Sissy, and Lix and Randall and even Hector: anyone that means they don't have to talk about themselves.

In the end, fueled by alcohol and the fact that he just can't bear the tension anymore, Freddie falls to his knees on the floor in front of her (it hurts a bit but he pretends it doesn't - Bel pretends she doesn't notice but he knows she does), and kisses her like his life depends on it (and he remembers that at one time, his life did depend on remembering to fight to stay with her and stay where she was).

Bel lets out a sob, a breathless cry before pulling him closer to her, her hands fisting his shirt front before moving to curl at the nape of his neck. At this point she is half off the sofa and in his arms, and the record plays on and on in the background but he can hardly hear it over his own thundering heartbeat. After a moment, Freddie realises he can taste her tears, and they remind him of all the reasons he fought to get back to her. Although this is not what he had imagined (although he is not even sure what he imagined, if he's honest), there is something beautiful in the sadness of it regardless. Nevertheless, he forces himself to stop, and finds himself wiping away the trails of her tears with his thumbs. Bel smiles tightly, her lipstick a little smudged. Her hair curls softly around her face, and tickles his hands.

"It's so hard to forget," she admits with a murmur and her fingers trace the scar on his cheek. A panicked shudder passes through him that he can't quite hide. He knows that she remembers the aftermath in the same way that he remembers the event itself. It is vivid violent technicolour, burnt behind his eyes when he closes them. He is the start, and she is the end of that particular story. Together, they remember everything, and are tied together by those partial memories. Both are haunted in different ways by the same act of violence.

"I know," he answers. Freddie would like to say something poignant and wonderful but he can't. His words have failed him. As much as he wants to pull her closer, even he can sense that she is far away from him right now. 

Freddie sleeps on the sofa alone that night.

He moves back to his own flat the following day.

\--

Lix Storm sees everything, through the haze of her cigarette smoke and the bottom of her whiskey glass. She pours one for Freddie as he slumps into the chair opposite.

"She'll get there, my dear boy," she says as the ash from her cigarette threatens to land on the scattered papers in front of her. "But you have to remember that she watched you almost die, and you remind her of that every day". 

\--

She's afraid, of course. Freddie knows Bel and knows these things about her. Like how she bites her lip when she worried and how her eyes widen in mock innocence when she tries to lie. Freddie knows the tells of Isobel Rowley, even when he can't play the winning hand. 

"You're going to be fine," she had whispered to him at the hospital when he had first regained consciousness. 

He wanted to tell her then that he knew she was lying. Even through the pain of Freddie's pounding head and twisted body, he could tell she didn't wholly believe her own words. His chest was tight and every breath was a struggle. He had wanted to call her out on the lie, almost as much as he wanted to kiss her (if only he could).

Her face had been inches from his on the pillow, so close that he could see the flecks of gold in her blood-shot eyes. The tiredness in them is as red and as vibrant as the blood he sees when he closes his own. He can't remember everything, but he remembers the impact of fists and the breath being knocked from his body.

A murmur of "Moneypenny" was the best he could do before he fell back to sleep, but he doesn't forget the teardrop that had landed on the pillow beside him.


	2. Chapter 2

The rhythm of Bel and Freddie is off-kilter. Bel-and-Freddie, Freddie-and-Bel. It is still there but Freddie can't grasp it and get it synchronised, as hard as he tries. It keeps slipping away from him like it used to, confounded by America and French wives and Bel's endless supply of unavailable men (and to think, he was briefly one of those, once).

There are none of these things between them now, but there is still everything between them. Some days the gap feels as wide as the Atlantic that he had travelled across, like she is one continent and he is another, and the oceans separating them are too stormy to make proper headway. 

Some days, despite everything, Bel tucks her arm into his as he walks home (he insists that walking helps the ache in his hip, and while it does somewhat, the reality is that he likes the cool night air of London and enjoys watching the street life of his city pass him by). Other days she's different. She looks at him like she is remembering the blood and the way his breath laboured under each word he tried to utter. Freddie notices sometimes that she can't even meet his eyes when he calls her Moneypenny, like he is stoking the flames of some internal fire inside her that is slowly burning up the resolute front she is clinging to.

Lix explains this to him eventually, when his casual 'Moneypenny' causes Bel to drop a cup and scramble from the newsroom. Apparently it was all he could utter that night, the night that to him is, at best, a haze of pain and the night sky. It is odd that he can remember the cold wet grass soaking through his clothing but that he can't remember calling for her. It is funny what the mind chooses to remember. 

It unnerves him to see Bel so unnerved. He knows she is strong in so many ways, but he also knows that she has built many walls to protect herself. Freddie used to live in those walls, and used to watch her pull them down one at a time, block by block, the amazing exquisite Bel Rowley. Now he is on the other side, and he doesn't like the distance it creates.

\--

They don't go to Soho anymore.

So when it is Sissy's birthday and she wants to go out dancing (and they all want to oblige her), they steer clear of those windy darkened streets. Anyway, the former El Paradis is under new ownership, with a new name, but they don't fool themselves that anything much has changed. The important men of the city have just found somewhere else more discrete to spend their time and money, and play out their devious desires.

\--

The jazz musicians at the club play with such spirit and soul and Freddie taps a rhythm out on the table as Bel sits beside him smoking a cigarette. They say nothing as they watch Hector spin Lix across the floor in a manner that is nothing less than drunkenly accomplished. Freddie smiles to himself.

"I miss you," Bel says suddenly, her voice barely audible above a howling saxophone. She doesn't look at him but he knows everything she is trying to say, even when she's not actually saying it.

He doesn't know how to reply, or even if she expects him too, so he says nothing.

"I _miss_ you Freddie," she repeats more forcefully, stubbing her cigarette out in the nearest ashtray and twisting around in her seat to face him. Only then does he really look at her. Her blonde hair is a halo and he is now even more irreversibly, irrefutably in love with her than on the day that they first met.

"I miss you too," he replies matter-of-factly. Freddie wants to say so much more than he can articulate in that moment, but as usual she has rendered him speechless in a way that she never used to in the past. He detests that words have failed him of late, those things that have always been under his control and at his mercy ever since he learnt he could bend them to his will.

And he knows. He knows that when she closes her eyes she sees him there on the grass. In the hospital. Struggling to climb the stairs to her flat. Her eyes graze across the scar on his cheekbone and Freddie knows she remembers those long hospital corridors and those longer hours by his bedside when he didn't wake up and looked as limp as a doll. He knows all this.

"Come on," she smiles. "Dance with me". 

\--

Hector has mellowed in recent months, Freddie has noticed. An evolution has taken place in him since the heady days of El Paradis. He drinks less (although Freddie would still class this, if forced, as more than most people - he himself would never be able to keep up) and shows up for work on time three out of every four days. It's a start anyway.

Freddie wouldn't flatter himself to think this change in Hector was because of what happened to him. Although he does know that Hector did visit him at the hospital rather a lot for someone who spent most of his time before that bating Freddie about his reverse snobbery and his (allegedly) terrible taste in ties. 

No, Freddie knows it is because of Marnie. It is the most obvious and natural reason, and despite Hector's legendary reputation and history for being irresponsible, Freddie does think that Hector will come to be a good father, in time. Freddie likes Marnie: always has. He also has a great deal of admiration and sympathy for her, although he knows enough about her to realise that she would dislike sympathy from anyone. But he feels there is somewhat of an unspoken affinity between them. After all, they've both watched the people they love, love someone else.

Hector eases into the seat beside Freddie, the small cushioned booth in the corner. Freddie spots Lix, Bel and Sissy dancing through the haze and dim light. The three of them are laughing and twirling and Freddie smiles instinctively.

"Are they too much for you?" he asks Hector.

"In my younger days, perhaps," Hector answers with a smug grin.

Freddie shakes his head in mock exasperation, and Hector laughs at him. They've spent a few years now playing this game. Freddie takes a sip from his nearly empty whiskey glass.

"Come and have a drink with me at the club tomorrow," Hector says, lounging in the space beside him. It seems Hector's aim in life is to always take up the maximum space he can, through charm, personality or sometimes just plain spatially. In comparison, Freddie always feels like he is sliding into the gaps around those sorts of people, shouting to be seen.

"I'm not a member at your club," he answers drolly. He is stating the blatantly obvious, as Hector perfectly well knows.

Hector shoots him a look: don't be deliberately obtuse, Freddie, it says. 

"I'll see you at six", Hector replies, before heading towards Isaac who is still waiting at the bar. All the female eyes in the place follow Hector as he goes.

Freddie returns to watching Bel swing her hips and share Lix's cigarette. She catches his eye and grins brightly, and Freddie can't help but tether himself to her again and again.

\--

They are both quite drunk when they leave the club. Halfway home in the taxi, he and Bel realise they only have enough money for part of the journey. Their driver therefore unceremoniously kicks them out on the far side of the Common, leaving them tumbling about with laughter. Luckily the night air is mild as they walk and Freddie is warmed by whiskey, Bel and jazz. 

Bel holds his hand tight in hers, like its normal, like it happens everyday. Freddie clasps it close and tucks their entwined fingers into his coat pocket, big enough for them both to fit. 

He always expected this kind of intimacy to feel normal: maybe because he had wanted it for so long. He felt that if (when) he and Bel ever became possible, the new closeness would just be an extension of the old closeness. 

But it isn't like that. Not that that's a bad thing - it's just _different_. He expected a level of apprehension and tentativeness, like settling in to a new item of clothing. Adjusting to the way it feels before it becomes second nature. 

It's not like that, at all. The way that they are now (however that may be) - not impossible, but not yet fully possible - doesn't come with ease. It feels anxiety-ridden and terrifying, like Freddie's heart wants to leap out his chest. When her hand reaches out for his hand, his mouth goes dry and he feels little better than a teenage version of himself. It is like every confidence he ever had, especially towards her, just vanished into the ether and there is no easy answer for this anymore.

He feels her unease too - even now, despite their fingers curled together. He sees the way she bites her lip, even in the shadows. There is a tension in her shoulders; it contradicts the effect of the number of brightly coloured cocktails that he had watched her consume earlier in the evening. 

Freddie feels concerned, like somehow he is doing something to make her uncomfortable. That is the last thing he wants. He thinks it over as they walk, saying little. The only sound is the huff of their breaths and the tapping of Bel's heels on the pavement. 

Freddie is torn between two minds, has been for some time now. He loves her, knows this, would do anything for her, make any sacrifice required. He would make that sacrifice even if it meant letting her go. 

In one version of possible-Bel-and-Freddie, she holds his hand in the dark early morning. They walk together in companionable silence. Her eyes follow him in the office as he paces the corridors for inspiration. They dance, and touch and it is more than before, filled with _possible_ , but he still wonders if they have stalled. Have they left it to long? Is it too late to change the habits of years: each of them determinedly blazing their own trails forward, but ensuring the other was close behind, within distance?

Freddie, in his darker moments, thinks she is trying to let him down easy. That she's changed her mind about them becoming a _them_ , and doesn't know how to tell him. He'd come back from the dead and clung to life (to her) and she feels obliged to be that lifeline still. 

Realistically he's probably just drunk and thinking the worst. He would never normally think of her as intentionally cruel, so he puts it down the effect of the alcohol still thudding through his body. However normally the book that is Bel is easier to read than it has been to him in recent months. His head hurts.

They reach Bel's flat, but he doesn't automatically follow her up. Instead he hovers awkwardly at the downstairs threshold, like he used to do in those first few months of friendship (so long ago now). She's part way up the stairs before she realises he's not following her. A strange expression crosses her face, but it is so fast that Freddie in his introspective haze can't read it. It is something akin to hurt and resignation, but he's not entirely sure. He doesn't dare to let himself consider it.

"Come on," she says, motioning at him with one hand. "Don't be ridiculous".

Freddie's not entirely sure how he is being ridiculous. He's not exactly adept at reading these situations at the best of times, and lately Bel has felt even more of a mystery to him.

He insists on being the one to sleep on the sofa this time. He still can't read the expression on her face when she turns out the light.

\--

Hector's drunk. Freddie mentally retracts all the good things he had concluded about Hector making progress. 

Hector's drunk because he's going to be a father and he's terrified. However there is something else that he's not saying, Freddie can tell that much. But Freddie hardly thinks that Hector is going to open up to him about whatever it is. 

"It's not my baby," Hector confesses. 

Freddie's clearly not on a roll with his Hector-related deductions lately.

They are tucked in a dark corner of Hector's club. A grim oil painting of someone-or-other glares ominously down over them. Hector ignores it (he would) but Freddie can't help but squirm under the scrutinising gaze (painting or not). Somehow, in the place, he is acutely aware that his shoes aren't as shiny and his suit isn't as expensive as they could be. Those things never used to bother him in the slightest, but somehow here, in this moment, he resents that it suddenly weighs on his mind.

Freddie had heard the whisper that passed through the room with his entrance that evening. He isn't a fool. He's _notorious_ now. Notorious Frederick Lyon, who brought down the gangsters and probably saved many of these men a great deal of embarrassment at the hands of Cilenti's honey-traps. Either that, or he cost them a great deal of money generated by profiteering or other such illegal and nefarious schemes. One or the other, it's all the same to him in the end. What's done is done, after all, and Freddie has the scars to prove it. 

Hector, of course, looks like he belongs here and judging by the state of him has been here for quite some time before Freddie's relatively punctual arrival.

Freddie doesn't say anything in response to Hector's revelation. What is there to say to something like that? Instead he leans forward as a prompt for Hector to elaborate. Journalism is listening after all. Freddie is still good at that.

Hector elaborates. 

\--

Hector elaborates them all the way to another bar, away from the stifling club atmosphere. Freddie is grateful to be able to undo his tie a little. He tries to persuade Hector to go home, or at least go back to the office, but in the end he's not sure that either place would appreciate the man right now. Hector is not that easily persuadable anyway.

This place is not El Paradis, but it isn't far off it. But the matronly landlady puts Freddie a bit more at ease (she's not exactly the kingpin type) and there are no dancing girls (not at the moment anyway, but the night is young). However, there is still something in the claustrophobic atmosphere that brings back those memories again: of when he was high on the pursuit of the story and he damned the consequences, to his detriment.

Freddie wonders who he could call for help with Hector, but in the end flags the idea. Let the man drink. What's the harm?

Rather a lot, as it turns out.

\--

Hector knows everyone in the bar. Of course he does. Or rather, everyone in the bar knows Hector, because Freddie's not entirely convinced that Hector cares very much considering the state he is in. Nevertheless, Hector still has the ability to look remarkably well turned out despite the deep slur in his voice. Perhaps others don't notice, but Freddie has learned over time to gauge Hector's level of drunkenness on how crisp his vowels are, and at the moment they are sliding together like mud.

People seem to know Freddie here too. Or at least know of him. They stare, fascinated, like he is an animal in a zoo. The scar on his cheekbone is his tiger's stripe, his identifying mark. They unabashedly examine him for damage, like they expect a more obvious display of what happened to him. Freddie feels like he should start limping just to give them something to look at. 

"I can't blame her, Freddie, I can't," Hector's mumbling. Freddie deposits him at a table, and waves over two glasses of whatever the nearest waitress is offering. Freddie's feeling less than steady himself at this rate, but he feels no guilt about it. Instead he hums his acknowledgement to Hector's statements and lets him continue through another two glasses.

"You're lucky," Hector says later, shaking Freddie out of his introspection with a heavy hand on his shoulder. Hector's fingers are like pincers on his bones. "You know Bel loves you, that she'd do anything for you".

Freddie's attention is caught. Bel has that effect even when she's not there.

"It was always you, wasn't it Freddie? All along, even when I thought it was me. I always wondered. Said to her once... said to her that she was herself when she was with you."

Freddie doesn't particularly want to talk about this with Hector. 

But he's also running headlong towards being classed as 'very drunk' and Freddie's not very good at keeping his mouth shut in general, let alone in the face of the countless number of drinks he has already consumed that evening in his efforts at keeping Hector company.

It turns out he doesn't even need to say very much. Hector is still quite adept at reading faces even when he's three sheets to the wind.

"Don't tell me after all this time that you still don't realise that?" Hector shakes his head in somewhat shambolic disbelief, and jolts Freddie's shoulder again, harder this time. Freddie hides a wince, probably unconvincingly. "I know things aren't... normal between you yet, an idiot can see that" (Freddie raises an eyebrow), "but she's scared, Freddie".

"Of what?"

Hector sighs, fumbling as he pulls a cigarette out of his case. He also offers one to Freddie, which he takes. Hector's television-ready face slides into an expression of gravitas (remarkable in itself, considering his state).

"At the hospital, it was awful..." Hector huffs, but Freddie can tell he is being serious, "... they weren't sure if you'd... wake up - the doctors... if you'd even make it. Of course, you know all this, I suppose."

Freddie swallows uncomfortably, and settles for digging about for his cigarette lighter to mask his discomfort. He had been given a watered down version of events by those he had questioned, but he wasn't naive enough to think that it hadn't been bad.

"She thought you were going to die. I saw it in her face," Hector shakes his head, as if trying to get the image out, "that she thought you were gone and she wished more than anything that she was gone along with you". Even Hector struggles with the words, although eloquent to the last.

"I think those thoughts... _scared_ her. She said to me later, a few weeks later, when you'd first woken up, that she wasn't sure if she could do it again. She couldn't bear it".

Freddie's hand instinctively tightens around the edge of the table. It was one thing for him to guess this was what Bel had been feeling, perhaps still was feeling, but it was quite another to hear it, and from Hector of all people. Freddie's throat feels tight and raw, and the whiskey burns more than ever on the way down. 

Hector must register Freddie's barely concealed reaction. 

"She's so strong," Hector's tone is mournful. "Bel... but those first few weeks... she was so terrified, like she was glass and the slightest thing would smash her to pieces. She'll get there, Freddie. She just has to realise you're not going anywhere." 

Freddie nods heavily, not trusting his voice. 

Hector abruptly laughs. It's awkward, as if he trying to break the tension that he created in the first place. It is an odd interruption considering the way the evening has gone so far. Marnie's affair and Bel's terror are a strange combination, but Freddie feels an odd bond with Hector that he's never quite managed before. 

"Let's get another drink!" Hector exclaims suddenly, and the night rolls on from there.

\--

Freddie is trying to corral Hector out of the door, but it is a fruitless exercise. Freddie has reached a point of lethargy where he really can't quite be bothered with this whole situation anymore. Normally he just would leave, but there is some remaining responsible urge to first get Hector moving in the right direction before he heads back to his own quiet flat.

Somewhere in between Freddie leaving Hector at the table, and going to settle their tab at the bar, a cloud of tension fills the room.

It is like the music has got louder, but instead he realises its a number of raised voices, and a sinking feeling hits Freddie's stomach.

\--

Hector, the former soldier, still hits hard and without equivocation. His fist meets the eye of someone Freddie doesn't recognise, but the words "stay away from my wife!" are clear enough as they ring through the heightened noise of the room. The music gets louder again, as if trying to drown out the ruckus in a there's-nothing-to-see-here kind of way, but there can be no pretence as to what is going on.

With a sigh, Freddie tucks his cigarette case back in his pocket, and enters the fray. Unfortunately, Hector would do the same for him.

\--

It's pointless of course. There isn't nearly enough of Freddie to restrain Hector and it takes precious moments before the landlady's sons (her security) break through the circle of people that have crowded around like spectators at a prize fight. 

Hector is drunk and stupid enough that he wants to take on the world, and the world, it appears, wants to return the favour. Only Freddie realises the world, in this case, turns out to be some broadcasters from ITV. And if, when his eyes meet Bill Kendall's, Freddie doesn't hesitate in elbowing him in the stomach on route to trying to get to Hector, well, who's to judge him?

It is odd now, in this adrenaline filled moment that he doesn't think of Cilenti or Pike or Trevor. Now, it would make sense, when Hector's fists are flying and connecting and his adversary and his friends are making a pretty good job at meeting the challenge. Instead of feeling terror, Freddie just doesn't care. It may be the numbing effect of the alcohol, to which at this moment he is grateful. His mind may torture him during sleep but it is good to know that in daylight hours, he hasn't quite turned into the coward he had feared.

There is also an even more unruly part of him that wants to shout in Bill Kendall's face. Wants to tell him that Bel was always to good for him, that she was wasted on him. That she isn't impossible and never has been, and even if she really was, that it wouldn't even matter. Freddie wanted to tell him that he would work his entire life to make things possible because she was worth that, worth ten times that.

Instead Freddie says nothing. A fist connects with the back of his head, and he scowls before finding himself bodily dragged out of the bar by security after Hector.


	3. Chapter 3

The hospital corridors don't seem so endless this time around. A few months ago when he was trying to get back on his feet, Freddie would shuffle up and down them, hobbling and using the rough cast walls for support. The nurses would smile encouragingly as he went by, before continuing on with their rounds, like coloured horses on a carousel.

It felt like yesterday and yet forever ago at the same time.

\--

Hector is fine, of course. Fine being a rather grim looking cut over his eyebrow, a black eye and a not quite broken nose. The nurse gives Freddie an icepack for the growing bump on the back of his head. It isn't really necessary, but considering the way she is matter-of-factly watching him, he feels obliged to press it to the ache anyway.

(Freddie realises after a minute that she recognises him from his previous stay, although admittedly he can't remember her. Mostly because he only remembered an endless rotation of faces, the never-ending ache in his bones and Bel's stricken face. In this case he's only connected the dots when he notices she had addressed him by name).

Freddie is directed to a small waiting area, and handed a cup of coffee. Hector is bustled away.

"I've called her. She'll be here soon," the nurse says to him.

\--

Marnie strolls in some indeterminable time later. Freddie is still waiting for the doctor to stitch up Hector's cut in a tiny cubicle down the way. The coffee is terrible and he ends up spilling some on himself as he stands up to meet her. His feet don't particularly want to obey him and a headache is settling between his eyes that the bright hospital lights are not helping with.

Considering it is the rather early hours of the morning at this point, Marnie still manages to look like she has stepped out of one of those magazines that Sissy is always reading. Immaculate, although a little tired. But well otherwise. Radiant, even.

"Mr Lyon. Honestly." Marnie shakes her head in disbelief at him, as if it was somehow Freddie that lead her husband astray. Freddie at least has the sense to try and look a little sheepish as they both sit down on the uncomfortable hospital chairs. He wants to lighten the mood and say something like "at least it isn't the police station this time" but that is water under a bridge that is probably best kept there. He wonders if he should perhaps apologise but just as he is about to open his mouth, Hector strolls out from behind the cubicle curtain, looking surprisingly earnest considering the circumstances.

"Hello darling," Hector says with his disarming public schoolboy smile. He even somehow manages to make a black eye look dashing and Freddie smarts a little. "I'm so terribly sorry that you had to get woken up because of this."

If Marnie is annoyed, she doesn't let it show. Years of practise, no doubt. She looks resigned if anything.

"Let's get you home," she says calmly, as she links her arm through Hector's. "We'll talk about it in the morning." She glances back at Freddie. "Shall I drive you home, Mr Lyon?"

Freddie contemplates it for half a second, before realising that the last place he wants to be is stuck in a car with the Maddens, given the circumstances.

"Thank you, but I'll walk," he says. He could do with the air.

\--

Marnie leads Hector away to their car and Freddie watches as they slowly become enveloped by the shadows. He momentarily pauses outside the hospital entrance, trying to get enough shelter from the now quite steady breeze in order to light his last cigarette.

Before he has the chance, a taxi hurriedly pulls up with a sudden shuddering stop. Freddie already feels sorry for the occupant, called the hospital at this hour of the night. He can see a figure fumbling around in the back of the cab before they scramble out of the passenger door.

It takes him an additional moment to realise that the person is Bel.

She's oblivious to her surroundings, not even seeing his hunched frame tucked away against the outer wall, coat collar upturned. She's already past him and two steps inside the entrance, before he recovers himself enough to call out after her.

Bel turns on her heel, looking flustered and half awake.

By this time, Freddie's by her side. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"The hospital called me!"

He's confused. "About _Hector_?"

"About you!" she hisses at him, before realising that their conversation has already gained a small audience in the reception area. With that, Bel takes his arm and bodily drags him outside.

"Why would they call you about me?" Freddie asks as he is towed along behind her, simultaneously trying to put his unlit cigarette back in its case and then back in his coat pocket. She stops suddenly and whirls around, and he has to stop himself from colliding with her. The expression in her eyes is wild and unreadable. He proffers his open palms to her as a gesture of reassurance. "I'm fine, as you can see".

This gives Bel pause a moment, her eyes quickly darting over his frame, as if checking these facts: there is a flicker of relief before they narrow on him again.

"You're still drunk!" Her tone is both exasperated and accusatory and mixed with more than a little anger.

Freddie supposes that she probably isn't wrong, considering. Actually, he's more than sure she's right (like usual). Well, maybe not _drunk_ , but at least at the tail end of pleasantly inebriated. He's also smart enough to realise at this point that now was not the time to deny it, or at the very least argue with her on a technicality. He considers opting for silence, but he can also tell that Bel is willing to wait out him out for a response.

"Hector started it," he says petulantly in the end, shoving his hands back into his coat pockets. 

Bel seems lost for words, but she's furious, he knows. It is the type of anger where he can tell she's not even entirely sure where to start; what needs to be said first. In all honesty, given the current haze that is his mind, Freddie's not even completely sure why she is so angry. But he knows that look on her face like he knows the back of his own hand. He finds himself thinking that she looks beautiful anyway, even in her barely concealed rage.

"You-" she starts sharply, waving a pointed index finger in his face, before letting her hand fall away with a sigh of realisation. "...you don't even understand... do you?" Bel stares at him intently, studying his reaction with a deep frown settling between her eyes.

Now he _is_ confused. "Understand wh-?" he half-asks, but before the words are even fully out of his mouth, Bel's storming away from him at speed, and he's left watching her retreating back.

Freddie's so unsure about what is just happened that his usually quick mind (dulled at the moment by rather hefty quantities of alcohol that his body is not accustomed to) is fumbling to catch up. Despite his current state, Freddie still prides himself on usually not being a complete idiot. Even Bel, who he can find simultaneously easier and harder to read than anyone else he knows or has ever met, is usually not this obtuse.

By the time he has regathered his senses, she already is at the main road trying to wave down another passing taxi. Freddie hurriedly jogs after her but even this action still jars his bones and he winces; but it is a comforting pain, more like proof that he's alive than anything else.

When he catches up, Freddie reaches for her arm, and gently pulls her around to face him. 

"Understand what? Look, I'm sorry about Hector. Things got out of hand. But I'm not exactly his minder, am I? A few days and some good make-up on that face of his and you'll never be able to tell the difference. You could get Isaac to do the show. Hell, _I'll_ do the show if you want!"

"This isn't about the show, Freddie!" Bel huffs, half shouting despite herself, hands reaching up to cover her face in a act of frustration. Gingerly, Freddie finds himself reaching out to pull her hands down. 

"What is it then?"

Bel is blinking back tears with her usual stubborn determination, although her hunched shoulders continue to truly betray her. Her loose hair falls over her face, tendrils fluttering in the night breeze. Freddie can barely see her under the pathetically dim street lights. Every now and then a car rumbles by, the headlights illuminating her face before casting it back into shadow again. He gets the sense from the look in her eyes that even if he tried to comfort her, she wouldn't let him.

There is a long pause before she finally speaks. When she does, her voice sounds heavy and tired, exhausted with the effort.

"Don't you get it, Freddie? Don't you _understand_? How can you be so smart and yet so dense sometimes? I... I... get a call in the middle of the night from one of the nurses at the hospital... about you, that you've... you've... been in a fight and...I run down here. I run... just like before..."

Her voice falls away and she finally crumbles in on herself, like the great weight on her shoulders has finally gotten the better of her and she can't bear it any longer. Bel, who has always carried the show, the story, _him_. 

Now Freddie understands, of course. Now that she spells it out and in such plain colours. He blames the overworked nurse for her lack of clarity and the alcohol for his lack of perception - even though Freddie knows his sharpness has been dulled for months now. His mind lately has been constantly pulled in too many different directions: _The Hour_ , Cilenti, bloody Hector and sweet Camille. His own recovery. And Bel, always Bel. And now the admission of Bel's fear of history repeating itself. How this simple miscommunication would scare her and bring back to the surface those old feelings of powerlessness and terror. He knows them too well, has felt them to the point of breaking, feels them even now in the face of her squall. 

He tries to insert some calm into the situation, but it is a role he is not particularly accustomed to. He's never exactly been the placative type.

"Bel. Look. See? I'm fine. Honestly! Please. Just a knock on the head...it might have even done me some good?" His mis-timed attempt at joviality falls flat between them, because all of a sudden one of her fists connects with his chest.

"This isn't _funny_ , Freddie. This isn't a _joke_. Maybe you can be ridiculous, and move on, and pretend nothing ever happened to you a few months ago just because you won't talk about it - that you almost _died_ , for god's sake! But I can't just forget it, Freddie. I just _can't_."

He doesn't know what to say. 

"I know that it happened to you and that you must think about it every day. I know that and maybe I'm being selfish, but I waited and waited for you. I..."

Timidly, he takes her balled up fists, rubs his thumb across her white knuckles, tentatively steps in closer to her. Her coat is flapping uselessly in the wind as they stand there. An out of service bus rumbles by, no passengers on board. Bel seems to accept his actions for a half-moment, but then wrenches her hands away. 

"No - I need to say this, I need..." She lets out a frustrated cry and finally looks him in the eyes. "I watched you leave, after your father died. And I missed you. I missed you every day. Every _second_. And yes, I got your letters and I was too scared to do anything, Freddie. I choose to do nothing because I'm a coward and you're brave... _stupidly_ brave. But I waited for you all that time, and told myself that when you came back, _if_ you came back, that I'd tell you... I'd tell you everything I should have told you all along. But... things were... different when you came back and then..."

(He pictures her face at the bottom of the stairs to his flat. She is smiling up at him but he can tell from years of knowing her that her smile is forced, even swinging towards completely fake. Camille stands beside him, her lean naked legs saying everything that Freddie couldn't say when he'd walked back into Lime Grove that morning. Those legs screamed an intimacy that he knew Bel could not misinterpret, even before he had uttered those strange words: "my wife").

At that moment, Bel's tears finally get the better of her and she turns away as if she can't bear to look at him anymore.

"Don't you see that I keep losing you, Freddie?" She turns back to face him and the pain in her face strikes him cold and desperate, like these thoughts have been crushing her for so long. 

"You're not losing me. I'm right _here_ ," he says, refraining from touching her again, even though it was the thing he aches to do. 

"But for how long this time, Freddie? How long until you run off into danger again, or end up in hospital again, or run away to America again? I can't go through that again."

They stand there for a long minute, neither saying anything and he feels the fight and defence drain slowly from her, as if his tangible presence provides some slight reassurance that he's not going anywhere. But even then he can tell that it isn't enough, not yet.

It makes sense, her distance, her fear. Freddie knows this. Has probably always known it if he hadn't been so distracted by recovery and just plain desire to be close to her. Maybe he had even wanted to ignore the obvious. In another world, what happened to him could have had an opposite effect, but these things are not controllable or easy to predict. Besides, it's true that Bel had watched him leave her behind so many times in recent memory, watched him circle in and out of her orbit, all in ways she couldn't control. Every time he came back he had only left again: to America, to Camille, almost to an early grave. 

"I'm so... scared, Freddie," she whispers, and it is these final words that break him. They are the fists that crunch his bones and sink his heart. "I can't be without you but I can't bear the idea of having to face losing you again. Isn't it easier this way? That things stay as they are? We drink terrible wine and I tease you about your terrible luck with women and you mock my choice in men, and we care for each other from a distance? In a way that won't destroy us both?"

It's ridiculous. This is ridiculous, he thinks. And he will say it, damn it, and he will kiss her and tell her to stop with this... this whatever-it-is. This circle of misery that she has talked herself into, so determined for neither of them to ever to be happy. All because of her fear of losing him outweighs any potential happiness they could have. This hypothetical mad world that she has dreamt up where she thinks that he would dare ever to willingly leave her again - as if he ever could now: no, never now, not when he knows that she loves him, even though she can't quite say it. 

But perhaps it is more than that. It is not only her fear, he realises, but maybe also her worry about losing her independence, her freedom. The thought strikes him dark and deep. He knows she has fought hard for everything that she has achieved. He knows this better than most, having stood by and watched her do it. In his heart of hearts, he understands that she may not even know this about herself, the reason why she picks unavailable men. They hold no threat to her, they will not ask her to give up that which means the most to her: the news.

He remembers a previous conversation that they had shared: that she would never pick a man over the news, because that is what courses through her, thrums through every vein.

And Freddie? Well, perhaps the mere possibility of him is too much.

All of this, this realisation, hurts him more than any of her other actions combined, even though he tries to tell himself that this is something Bel may not even be aware she is doing. He may even be wrong, but he has to examine all the possibilities, collate all the facts at his disposal. Despite that, he feels she should know him better - he would hope that she does. As if Freddie would ever make her give up what makes her what she is! He loves her completely, not in parts. He would never ask her to give up anything that makes her happy, that makes her the Bel Rowley that he loves.

But he also knows that he will not be the one to thwart her. He doesn't want to be the cause of any resentments. He can't make her doubts go away if she doesn't want them to.

His voice is steadier than his heart feels when he answers her. "Is that what you really want, Bel? For things to never change?"

His calmness throws her. Perhaps on another day, another moment in another lifetime, Freddie (nine times out of ten) would have leapt to challenge her. He would have argued and railed against her logic, would have pulled apart her fear piece by piece until there was nothing left but truth and calculated determined answers.

But he can't force her. He doesn't want her to be with him by being pushed into a corner, where loving him is the only way to stop her losing him altogether. It is a core fact of their relationship that he has loved her longer and harder of the two. He doesn't ever doubt that, is sure she wouldn't argue it, but at the same time he has never resented it either. It is a basic fact of his soul, etched there, part of what makes him _him_ ; like the fact that his eyes are green, that he doesn't care for chocolate, that his favourite colour is the gold of her hair.

In that moment, she can't answer him, and he can't make her. 

Instead, he kisses her. Softly, slowly, achingly, the feeling of her lips jarring him out of his mind, into cold hard sobriety. He kisses her like he thinks he will never kiss her again, and that knowledge pains him more than any fists or broken bones. He only hopes that she feels what he is trying to say.

Freddie pulls away and doesn't look at her. He walks away into the darkness before Bel can reply.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He spends a lot of time thinking about Bel. About the sickness he feels in walking away from her, about his notable absence from the office. He doesn't flatter himself to think that Bel's professionalism would ever suffer because of his actions - his cowardly flight - but he knows deep down that running away again could only have exacerbated the situation and ultimately proven her point about him.

Freddie is not accustomed to skipping out on work, but considering the events of recent months, Randall doesn't seem surprised when Freddie calls him to say he is taking the week off and he won't be back until the following Monday.

"I take it you haven't told Ms Rowley?" Randall asks, his clipped tone belying a knowledge that Freddie can only take a running guess at.

"No," Freddie answers sharply before he hangs up the receiver.

\--

He goes to Edinburgh.

He'd been before, as a child, to visit his mother's relatives (all long dead now). He remembers it as cold, but enchanting, like all the mysteries of the world had culminated in its stonework and were waiting to be rediscovered.

Freddie takes a small hotel room and smiles tightly at the perky receptionist. Her open face reminds him of Sissy. She notes his typewriter case and at once asks him if he is writing a book; he looks like a writer, she says, something about his face, a storyteller's face.

In another lifetime, before Bel, he might have been charmed by her. But at this moment, she is the obstacle between him and solitude. He takes his room key with a curt nod and heads upstairs.

\--

There is a lot of time to think. Freddie is used to his own thoughts; used to them bouncing through his mind at such speed that he struggles to keep hold of just one before another comes along that equally captures his interest. It is always so easy at Lime Grove to get caught up in something or other: peering over Lix's shoulder, reading Hector's notes, even editing Isaac's forays into the abstract. There is always a constant stream of chatter.

Edinburgh is silence, even though the city is anything but. It bustles like London, but still somehow also cultivates a relaxed atmosphere that Freddie's life has never been able to emulate. It unnerves, yet oddly pleases him, at the same time.

He spends a lot of time thinking about Bel. About the sickness he feels in walking away from her, about his notable absence from the office. He doesn't flatter himself to think that Bel's professionalism would ever suffer because of his actions - his cowardly flight - but he knows deep down that running away again could only have exacerbated the situation and ultimately proven her point about him.

He likes to think in his more ludicrous moments (after half a dozen back-to-back cigarettes and two really good, very genuine Scotch whiskeys) that this was his hero's sacrifice. He was making it easy for her. Frederick Lyon, the man who runs away. He doesn't think to analyse it too much, no doubt he'd hate himself even more if he did that. But as he's learning, he's not good at reverting back to solitude after all these years.

\--

Almost immediately after his arrival, Freddie takes to frequenting the hotel bar in the evenings. It is a cosy establishment, with what seems to be more than a few long-term regulars. The barman is friendly, and lets Freddie scratch away with his pen and paper in the corner, only bothering him to top up his drink at Freddie's signal.

One evening, the perky receptionist comes in to speak with the barman. Her hair is pinned up tonight, and the style reminds Freddie of Marnie's. She turns and catches his eye.

"Good evening, Mr Lyon," she says, stopping by his seat. Her accent lilts melodically, and the fabric of her skirt brushes the edge of his table as she lightly rests her fingers on the hard surface. Her fingernails are painted a soft pink. Bel rarely ever wears nail varnish, he thinks oddly, out of the blue.

He politely returns her greeting.

"Is there anything I can do to make your stay more comfortable?" she asks.

In the mouth of a different woman, the sentence could be misconstrued, but here it is genuine and accommodating, open and friendly. Freddie feels himself relax a little, and puts his pencil down to meet her eyes properly for the first time.

"Fine, thank you. Everything is wonderful," he stresses the last word, as if forcing it will make true. He knows his smile is more a grimace, but she doesn't appear to notice.

\--

At least once during each day he climbs up Arthur's Seat and sits overlooking the city. The weather is warming now, even for Edinburgh, and it is quite pleasant to watch other walkers scramble around in the hills below. The rooftops of the city appear a uniform grey, but lie in odd shapes and formations, bordering around the twisted cobbled streets. 

He's not sure what he'll do when he gets back to Lime Grove. Freddie is not accustomed to this feeling of uncertainty and he finds he detests it thoroughly. In the past he has always known his path, followed it doggedly. Bel had always been on that path, and admittedly still was, even if this time he trailed behind her instead of next to her, holding her hand. 

That decision was no longer his to make now anyway.

\--

The receptionist joins him at the bar the that evening. He's re-reading Fleming's _From Russia with Love_ and although she says she has only ever read _Moonraker_ , he can't help but be a little impressed.

She asks him to come dancing, and it is a combination of boredom and whimsy that drives him to say yes. She - Mary - is sweet, and looks on him like one would a puppy rather than as a piece of prey, and that somewhat comforts him.

He and Mary meet a gaggle of her girlfriends on a Princes St corner, and at that point he begins to feel overwhelmed. Whilst Freddie has always fought to be noticed and found himself to be forgettable in London, here he appears to be a somewhat of a novelty.

They are all very sweet, really. Some of them coo and sigh and there are hands on his arms, and hushed awe that he is a _journalist_. They don't seem perturbed by the scar on his cheek. They know nothing of his story and he is grateful for that.

But the whole thing leaves him rather cold. Maybe in another world, a world where Bel Rowley didn't exist, this would have been met by him with a degree of enthusiasm. But Freddie knows Bel exists, even if she isn't there, and nothing, no number of fleeting grazes against his hand, will make him forget that. Freddie watches himself with a feeling of detachment, dances with Mary and her friends with pleasure but no true joy. The pints he drinks are warm and it is late when they all leave.

Mary has a small room at the top of the hotel, so they walk back together. Her arm is looped in his, but it is friendly rather than flirtatious. He is glad of that at least.

The lobby is dim and quiet when they shuffle in. A night porter is asleep in a chair by the door and they sneak past with muffled footsteps. Freddie is on second floor.

Freddie says goodnight to her as he reaches his corridor and finds he genuinely is thankful for her timid kindness and company. Mary smiles softly, her mouth slowly curving upwards.

"Goodnight, Mr Ly-- Freddie," she corrects herself. He smiles and turns towards his door, but her voice calls to him again before his key meets the lock.

"She's lucky to have you, you know," Mary says, leaning against the wall watching him. "She might not know it right now, but she will."

Freddie opens his mouth to respond (to say what, he's not sure) but before he can, there is the tap of heels and she is gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But this conversation was happening now. Likely in his front room, and although Freddie had defeated his inner coward many times over these past few months, his stomach now wrenched to betray him. He took a deep breath before heading towards his fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the final chapter, guys. Sorry it took so long. I've been trying to edit it because I don't really love it, but I got to the point where I couldn't anymore!
> 
> Thank you all for reading and for commenting - I really appreciate it. I have got another The Hour fic in the pipeline, just need to find a beta or get around to editing it.
> 
>  
> 
> [#savethehour](http://savethehour.tumblr.com/)

The train journey back to London takes longer than scheduled. There is a problem on the line and it is an hour later than he expected when Freddie finally turns the corner onto his street. His typewriter is heavy in its case and he looks forward to a hot cup of tea and bath and the attempt to prepare himself for his return back to Lime Grove in the morning.

He is part way between contemplating the benefits and downsides to avoiding Bel entirely when he sees a familiar figure sitting on his front wall, reading a book.

Freddie finds himself faltering, momentarily struck dumb by the fact that Bel is _there_ , and appears to be waiting for him. Her legs are crossed carefully at the ankles: it is odd to see her out of her office outfits and actually in casual trousers. Even at this distance, he recognises the book: _Casino Royale_ \- they both have matching editions. She is about half way through and frowning at it (not wearing her glasses, Freddie notes), slowly turning the page. She hasn't seen him yet.

But then she does.

He is thankful for those earlier unnoticed seconds. They had given him enough time to collect himself so he is able to continue putting one foot in front of the other. His eyes lock on her as Bel carefully puts something in between the pages to mark her place. She pushes herself off the wall and stands to greet him.

Freddie stops in front of her. He's grateful that his hands are occupied with his cases, otherwise he would have agonised as to where to put them. Bel seems to be finding her feet extremely fascinating.

The silence stretches on until he can bear it no more.

"Moneypenny," he says out of that old habit that he just can't escape. As soon as it is out his mouth he considers that it may have been the wrong choice, but luckily it makes Bel glance up and he is rewarded with a half-smile. A feeling of relief swims through him.

"James," she answers, her anxiety-ridden smile becoming just that bit wider. He can tell by the way her fingers clutch the book that she's nervous but considering the way his own heart is beating a rapid staccato, he can't really judge. 

Bel looks lost for conversation. "You're back," she says eventually, lamely. He can tell that she is internally disappointed in herself for this whole interaction. Freddie is just glad that there is at least something to fill the gasping silence.

"Obviously," he answers, motioning to his cases which are still dangling from his aching arms. "Although I didn't expect a welcoming party?" 

Bel's mouth gapes open to form a retort but comes up empty. In the past, verbally besting her would have given Freddie a great deal of satisfaction, but now is only pains him. This whole conversation resembles a shadow - a ghost of what they had been. He can't even tell what she is here to say. The book that is Bel Rowley feels like it is in a different language to him at this moment. That said, he can only feel grateful for her presence. The sight of her is a relief in comparison to a long week in Edinburgh without her.

"Come up for a drink then?" he says, eager to get whatever conversation she has come here to have under way. If this is to be the end of Bel-and-Freddie then he'd rather hear the hard truth as soon as possible and with a glass of something to help numb it.

Bel nods, and with that, follows him inside the front door and up the staircase. Their footsteps thud ominously with their progress, echoing like a death march. Freddie can hear a blaring television in the distance and fumbles to find his keys. He can sense her eyes on the back of his neck, a thought which causes an eruption of panic in his stomach before he firmly pushes the sensation away.

She trails in after him, shutting the front door, and watches as he throws his cases in the nearest corner. He had left the place in a bit of a state, and feels a touch ashamed before realising that this was Bel and she was more than aware of his ramshackle approach to housekeeping and general domesticity. However, he realises now that Bel had only been inside his flat a handful of times since he had come back from America. He didn't like to remind himself of the reasons for that.

"Let me find some glasses," he mutters, half to himself, half to her as she shrugs off her jacket, hangs it over the back of the nearest chair and puts her book down on the table. He escapes to the kitchen for a brief respite, opening cupboards at random to find something for them to drink. He hears her footsteps pace through the sitting room but he doesn't glance back until he finds two clean glasses and an unopened bottle of wine, still in its brown paper bag. He doesn't remember buying it (it may have even been Camille's) but it will do.

Freddie's not entirely sure if he is ready for what is about to happen, although he doesn't even know what it is yet. On the train journey back, he had run over the various scenarios in his mind: an argument, a resolution, a tense silence, but they had all taken place at Lime Grove where he had the option of escape or at the very least attempt avoidance. 

But this conversation was happening _now_. Likely in his front room, and although Freddie had defeated his inner coward many times over these past few months, his stomach now wrenched to betray him. He took a deep breath before heading towards his fate.

Bel twists around abruptly as he enters, like she is surprised to find him there, even though they are in his flat surrounded by his things. She had been looking at the photo he kept of him and his mother. It was in a frame on the wall - one of the few things that he had bothered to unpack straight away when he and Camille had first moved in. He dropped the glasses and bottle on the table with a heavy hand before realising he'd forgotten a corkscrew.

"One minute," he says, about to dash back into the kitchen, before Bel catches him by his sleeve and he freezes on the spot, as if paralysed by her touch. He barely has a chance to turn his head to look at her before she steps towards him, a determined expression on her face.

There is a half-second of hesitation before her hands move up to grip either side of his collar and she tugs him towards her with a fierceness that he hadn't known he had missed until that moment. 

Then she kisses him. Properly kisses him.

Freddie's in shock for a moment, but a good kind of shock, like the thrill of an unexpected but very welcome surprise, like getting something you had hoped for for a really long time. What is happening right at this second is both of those things. Instinctively his hands move from his sides to rest tentatively on the swell of her hips.

Bel's mouth is sweet and soft and although they have done this before - briefly, barely at all in comparison, this kiss is like a new thing entirely. He can taste her nervous anxiety, the way her hands snake around his neck, the arch of her pressed up against him. The slow curve of her lower back. She is everywhere and everything and he was a fool to ever think that he could persuade himself otherwise. Freddie feels like he is flying, like he is too close to the sun and he will burn up with his need to stay close to her. 

For all his worry about this new possible _them_ , this new thing is something even he cannot articulate, even if he had the present sense and capacity to think properly - which he doesn't right now on account of Bel's lips on his and the way her hair feels threading between his fingers. It is a culmination of months, of years, of unsaid things. It is nothing like the kiss they had shared in a Lime Grove dressing room another lifetime ago before Freddie rang headlong into danger without a second thought. Freddie could only describe that kiss as chaste in comparison, even though at the time his heart had been in his mouth and it had set him alight in the best possible way. But _this_ ; this kiss was not the extension of friendship or companionship. This kiss was not even an extension of Bel-and-Freddie, of their intellectual sparring and mutual admiration. This kiss was a raw unsettling newness, with hard corners and sharp edges: a deep passion that Freddie had only dreamed off, and that Bel had only recently come to terms with. They fit. They _fit_ , and it was the best possible news that Freddie had ever uncovered in his entire life.

They should talk, of course. There are things that need to be said, things to be considered and discussed and apologies that he needed to make to her. But every time he thought to move away, the magnetic force of her pulled him back. He couldn't believe that this was real and she had chosen him and this was indeed even happening. 

Somehow, in amongst all of this, she had pressed him up against a door frame, the ridge digging into his back uncomfortably. But Freddie can't force himself to care, his mind a haze of thrilled punctuation and the soft track of Bel's hands at the nape of his neck. The kiss was not sweet, not like before. It had warped into something sharp and urgent, her teeth grazing his lower lip and mouth opening against his and all she needed to do was sigh against him before he became completely lost.

Somewhere in the background he is aware of her pushing his coat off his shoulders, and only then does he realise that he hadn't even bothered to take it off when they had come in, so flustered he had been. Freddie usually hates being flustered, it is not his natural disposition. He likes to be in control of his feelings, finds nothing worse when these things get away from him. But now, in this second, he is all of these things. Bel had only ever been the one who could make him feel that way, of course. He hears his coat fall heavily to the floor around their feet.

He knows he should stop her, even though it seems that Bel is determined to make him lose his ability to formulate words: an amazing feat indeed. He has never been kissed this way before in his entire life, not Camille, not Lix, not those few other girls back in his university years that thought they could change him or distract him away from his weighty ambitions. No, this was it for him. Here, right now. There was nothing better than this.

However somehow Bel must sense his hesitation, because she pulls away, leaving him still reaching for her lips nevertheless. She looks at his face, no doubt a mixture of shock and desire, and lets out an abrupt laugh.

"Well, Mr Lyon. Look at the state of you," she teases. Freddie doesn't need a mirror to know what he would see. Anyway, he's too focused on her, mouth swollen and red and her eyes bright and fixed on him. He can't help but smile back as he smoothes down his hair and goes to find that corkscrew. 

\--

He doesn't have a sofa, so they sit at opposite ends of his small table. The distance feels enormous compared to before, but it is necessary considering that every time they touch each other, the cycle begins again and they both know that there are things to be said before this can go any further.

The wine is nice, much nicer than anything he'd ever buy, and it adds to the weightless joy that is already coursing through him. Bel can't stop smiling, which makes him smile and the previous gulf of the last few months closes between them with each passing minute.

"How was Edinburgh?" she starts. "Randall told me."

Freddie lights a cigarette and offers her one, which she declines. "Scottish," he said, winning another smile from her (he is happy to spend his life earning those smiles), "but lonely."

"I hope you aren't going to be in the habit of taking abrupt holidays all the time," Bel answers, eyebrows raised. "Hardly a good habit for a star journalist, even if he is the infamous Frederick Lyon." 

"Yes... well, I... _am_ sorry about that," Freddie admits, unaccustomed to apologies at the best of times, and certainly unaccustomed to granting them so freely.

"It's all right," she sighs, letting him off the hook with an ease that he didn't expect. "Things have been a mess, haven't they?"

"That's putting it rather mildly," he replies, noting the way Bel's biting her lip again. He would rather be sitting next to her than what feels like miles away, but neither of them are any good at this, it seems.

"Hector's face has healed up okay," she says, and Freddie is wondering about the strange change of subject until she continues. "I shouldn't have said those things I said to you, that night outside the hospital".

"It's forgotten," he frowns, wishing he could reach for her hand across the table. Bel looks a bit lost. He knows this is not customary for her, this vulnerability. He's not exactly used to it himself. 

"I'm sorry for how I've been," she continues, and he can tell each word is a great struggle for her. 

Freddie feels suddenly angry, forcefully rising up from his chair and putting out his cigarette in the nearest ashtray. He is determined to not let her take the blame for this, or for how she felt. Freddie doesn't want her apology - doesn't feel worthy of it at all. It isn't her fault. It was he that started all this: like a dog with a bone with regards to Cilenti and El Paradis and poor poor Rosa. He knew he had been running headlong into something dangerous that he fully couldn't comprehend, and perhaps that is why he had stopped running away from her too. He had kissed her, set those long-awaited wheels in motion and then had ended up in hospital, forcing the woman he loved (always loved, irrefutably, incalculably) to sit through the ordeal powerless and alone. For her to have a genuine apprehension and fear after all that, well, that was not worthy of apology and he knew few people who could have coped with it the way she did.

He stops his pacing and finally looks at her. "Bel, no. This _isn't_ your fault."

She sits frozen in her chair, as devastating exquisite as she has always been, and he is done with ever thinking they are impossible ever again. He continues.

"You have been, and always will be marvellous. Truly. And I know things haven't been easy for you, for me, for any of us. But you weren't wrong... I have left you, in the past."

Freddie pulls her to her feet, already feeling the relief of being able to be close to her again. He never thought, all those years ago, that this would ever be possible. But it is, they are making it that way. He doesn't let go of her hands.

"But you know what? I'm not going anywhere, Bel Rowley. I'm never going to leave you, if you don't want me to. I'm going to be around so much that you're going to become sick of the sight of me!" 

Bel breaks into laughter, through shining eyes and a lightness and he hasn't seen on her face in many months. _I've done that_ , he thinks, _I've done that_ and that thought overwhelms him with pride. 

"What makes you think I'm not sick of you already?" she teases, her proximity already making him lose track of most tangible thoughts. He can feel her breath of his cheek and the smirk on her face is irresistible.

"Really, Moneypenny? Is that the best you can do?"

"Oh, you haven't seen my best yet, James," Bel murmurs, as she lets her lips barely brush his in response.

"I'm very interested in hearing more," he answers, watching as she starts undoing the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt, her fingers grazing softly against his wrists. 

"Oh, I've written a whole manifesto about it," she retorts with a raised eyebrow, "I'd welcome your input."

"With pleasure, Moneypenny."

\--

Freddie's bed is still a mattress on the floor, but they barely notice. 

\--


End file.
